Capitalism 2.0

It's the PRICE stupid!

By Randolph

Listen to the cacophony of despair oozing out of the mouths of our mainstream media and politicians.  It would be comical if not for the pathetic nature of it all.  All these whining shills and self proclaimed experts seem willing to cackle about everything under the sun ... except for price.  What do I mean, read on...

Pop!

By Randolph

The residential real estate bubble has finally started to pop!  Some readers will know that I am a long-time author at Patrick.net, one of the biggest real estate bubble blogs.  I've authored many dozen articles there, including a few which involved a good amount of original research and analysis.  One notable result has been The Bubblizer model (Excel), which has been featured on this blog since the beginning.

But now we've entered a new phase of the housing bubble blog-o-sphere.  I call this phase "The Coming of the Trolls".

Gartner Warns Corporations Away from Second Life

By Randolph

File this in the "sorry you're late, but glad you're finally here" category.  Gartner, after blindly gushing about Second Life only a few months ago, now says:

Companies that are sensitive to brand issues, as well as social and ethical positioning, must exercise particular caution in uncontrolled virtual worlds, such as Linden Lab’s Second Life

Second Life -- Deathwatch

By Randolph

After nearly six months of trying my best to ignore Linden Research's game world Second Life, their media cheerleaders, and especially their rabidly vindictive cultist players, time has finally come to call the veritable end game.

With the removal of gambling as the primary source of the Second Life real-cash economy, and the growing possibility of a Linden buyout, the end of Second Life as we know it grows ever near.

Housing Market Fiction

By Randolph

Fact or Fiction: The US Housing Market is "gently correcting".  In fact, "now is a great time to buy!".

...and here's some carefully staged, professionally smoothed, and attractively presented data from the NAR et. al. to prove it...

But wait a minute, someone has actually taken the time to go get the same source data sets and draw the same graphs.  But they've come to a very different conclusion...

Hiatus

I've been on an extended blog-break for the past many weeks.  I'll be returning with some new weekly articles shortly.  I've been working on some very interesting projects which have spawned a lot of potentially interesting discussion topics.

Coldwell Banker becomes first Realtor of “Virtual Real Estate”

COLDWELL BANKER® ENTRANCE INTO SECOND LIFE® MAKES VIRTUAL HOMEOWNERSHIP EASIER FOR MILLIONS OF RESIDENTS

Company Leads Real Estate Industry Into Virtual Future

(press release)

File this in the "this is a joke, right?" category.

Presenting Your Pitch

You've developed your idea into a working prototype.  Your co-founders and you are experienced and confident.  Your angel investor has helped to open some doors giving you a couple of impressive early customer partners.  You can't help but thinking ahead to actually starting to earn a salary and hire employees.

Now you've secured audience to present to a venture capital fund.  All your dreams are now riding on you and your team's ability to get funding.  You know that venture capital funding is preferable to the alternatives.  In fact, you believe that funding from the right venture capitalist greatly enhances your prospects of success.

So you go open your pitch presentation in PowerPoint.

 

Linden dollars, Terrorism and Crime

In "The Linden Dollar Game", commenter, Matt Beam, near the end of the discussion raised a very interesting question which hasn't been discussed very widely.

Just a question:

If anyone around the world can play 'Second Life' and exchange his currency into Linden-Dollars and back, so can two users fake a deal like followed and transfer real money for a real threat:

Sleeper in US builds trivia in SL and offers financier in Middle East for a fantastic prize. Financier exchanges amount into LDs, pays sleeper in LDs, who exchanges them into USDs, commits the crime and no one can prevent this transaction.

Am I right ?

Regards
Matt

Posted by: Matt Beam | Saturday, March 17, 2007 at 02:47

Linden Lab Fact Sheet

A number of emails have inquired about the specifics of Linden Research ("Linden Lab", "LL").  I've compiled this fact sheet, for those interested.  This information is reasonably accurate, but some of it is a tad bit dated.  I'm not sure how much more I'll write on the subject, given that it seems the honeymoon is quickly drawing to a close on Second Life.